Founded in 2013, itBit has established itself among the big cryptocurrency exchanges. The company originally had its headquarter in Singapore, but has moved to New York in 2014.

Trading

ItBit enables its users to trade USD, EUR or SGD against Bitcoin. The liquidity in these currency pairs is quite good, as the bid-ask spreads for USD/BTC and EUR/BTC are about 15 basis points (0.15 percent). For SGD/BTC this spread is even near zero percent. Besides this spread, itBit charges a 50 basis points taker fee. This is rather high, but on the other hand makers get a 10 basis points rebate when their trade execute. Most exchanges simply offer a lower trading fee to makers, hence this rebate is a rare find. Still, the change is expensive for those who do not wish to run the risk of not having their order executed.

The exchange does not offer many trading functionalities, given that the only available order type is a limit order. Market orders and, more importantly, advanced order types such as stop-loss orders are not available. ItBit also does not offer support for margin trading/short selling.

itBit Trading Summary

Item

Details

# Cryptocurrencies

1 (BTC)

# Fiat currencies

3 (USD / EUR / SGD)

Trade fees (trade size $1,000)

0.20%

BTC/USD half bid-ask + impact (trade size $1,000)

0.06%

Minimum trade size

No

Margin trading

Not supported

Derivatives

Not supported

Market orders

Not supported

Advanced orders

Not supported

Funding

As common for most international Bitcoin exchanges, funding an account with fiat currencies through an international transfer is also a painful process at itBit. For a USD wire transfer the fees are bad and the time to process a transfer is worse. The exchange charges $5 for deposits and $30 for withdrawals, which is an additional cost besides those charged by the intermediary bank (ranging from $15 to $65 per transfer). Furthermore, transactions typically take multiple days to be processed. It does not help that itBit has a default 72 hour withdrawal holding period.

European (SEPA-zone) users will find the process a bit less painful, as SEPA transfers cost a lot less. Even so, transfer processing times are not a whole lot better.

itBit Funding Summary

Item

Details

Cheapest funding method available in

United States

Cheapest funding method

ACH (withdrawals)

Deposit fees (local)

$10 (Domestic Wire)

Withdrawal fees (local)

Free of charge

Instant deposits possible?

No

Bitcoin Deposit fees

Free of charge

Bitcoin Withdrawal fees

Free of charge

Platform

A lot of effort seems to have been put into the design of itBit’s platform. The end result has been a very neat and easy to use platform. It is a pleasure to the eyes, and it has also been optimized for mobile use. It is too bad that the design has clearly come at the cost of speed. For mobile users this is even worse, thus leaving little benefit of the responsive design. In trading, and especially in highly volatile Bitcoin markets, every second counts.

Help & Support

ItBit has managed to set an example with regard to the information offered at its website. The support center offers an extensive FAQ that seems to cover any relevant question concerning the exchange, its policies or functionalities and Bitcoin in general. The exchange even has an education library dedicated to the latter. A tiny remark has to be made on this one, as the available guides are a bit one-sided. The benefits of Bitcoin are covered extensively, yet, the risks involved with Bitcoin are not included. Should any questions remain unanswered then the additional support options are limited, as it will have to be requested via email for international customers.

Legitimacy

The company’s legitimacy has been evaluated with the help of a Fraud Risk Assessment. A summary is provided below, and the full assessment can be found by following this link.

Item

Number

Red flags

0

Warnings

2

A weighting factor of 40% is applied to legitimacy in calculating the final rating. A weighting factor of 25% is applied to both trading and funding, while a weighting factor of only 15% is applied to both platform and support. If the legitimacy score is 0% then the total rating is automatically set to the lowest possible result.

Pros

• Fully regulated exchange (trust charter) • Extensive guides

Cons

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This company has horrible customer service. I have tried opening a new account and sent $2,000 from my partner’s account (the site never mentioned that the funds had to originate from an account carrying the same name). The company said they could not apply the fund to my account because the funds originated from an account that did not have my name, and that the bank would refund me within 2 days. The wire was sent on 5/24, up to this date I have sent over 6 emails and have left over 4 voice messages, all to no avail. I have even asked out Citibank account to intervene request a refund of the wire. But up to now I still get no response nor do I get the refund. I have had poor service before, but this is blatant disrespect. I feel there’s no other way than getting my attorney involved. Very disappointed.